The whir of machinery reverberated through the walls like the pulse of a slumbering giant.
Darian hurried through the darkened loading bay, his steps quiet on the highly polished steel floor. Elira trailed behind, her breathing shallow, her gaze darting about. Each corner seemed a trap waiting to be sprung.
A thin corridor stretched from the central cargo area—crates marked REDACTED along its walls and floor sensors camouflaged beneath metal grilles. Darian came to a halt by a wall panel that shouldn't have existed, his fingertips inches away from the surface.
"This is it."
The panel was empty—no keycard reader, no keypad, no suggestion of access in any form. But Darian had already encountered technology like this. Concealed biometric triggers.
He reached into the jacket pocket of his own garment, bringing forth a microprocessor-implant contact lens. Inserting it with trained flair, he blinked twice to initialize his HUD overlay.
The pane glowed pale now, circuitry's webs burning like a fire in crystal.
"Found you."
Leaning close, Elira stage-whispered, "You said it wasn't mapped?"
"Nope. That's the issue." He knelt, drawing a needle-thin device from his belt and probing the edge of the panel with it. There was a click, and a quiet whir. The metal slid back wordlessly, opening to a fingerprint reader and retinal port.
"Backup entry," Darian grumbled. "They evidently didn't care if anyone was going to uncover this."
Elira's tone was strained. "Do you think this might be where the vault is?
No." He stood, wiping sweat from his forehead. "This is just the entrance to the floor above it."
He touched his thumb to the scanner. Nothing.
"Elira," he said, extracting a second contact from his case. "Insert this."
She hesitated, then complied. Her eye flashed briefly as the overlay engaged.
"Do you see the heat lines?"
She nodded slowly. "There's. another scanner. Under the floor tile."
Darian grinned. "Exactly.
Ten seconds after that, he had the plate off with a suction device, exposing a second biometric pad—this one smeared with a thin layer of blood.
"Someone's been here," Elira breathed.
"And recently." He activated his gloves and took both scans at once.
A hiss of decompression, followed by silence.
The secret door swung open with a soft shhhk, to expose a dark staircase leading down into the ground.
Both stood there, looking down into the void.
Elira let out a breath. "Well. That isn't ominous."
"Keep close," Darian instructed, checking his sidearm. "And no matter what. don't touch anything."
The stairs went down for what seemed like an eternity. With every step, the air colder, the silence thicker.
Down at the bottom, they came to a security checkpoint that appeared. abandoned.
Two guards sat slumped in their posts, eyes wide open, faces set in mid-thought.
Dead.
Elira breathed softly. "Poison?"
Darian bent beside one of them, studying the faint purpling around the mouth.
"Quick-acting nerve agent. No struggle. Someone didn't want them raising an alarm to the surface."
He passed by the checkpoint and into the hall beyond. It ended in one steel door, as thick as a bank vault, closed up tight. A glowing interface on the wall to the side glowed.
Elira stepped up. "You think The Hollow already arrived?
Darian examined the bodies once more, then the interface. "No. If they had, this door would be open."
He followed the interface with gloved hands, observing it change in real-time. The access system was unlike anything he'd ever seen—quantum-coded, stacked with dynamic keys that updated every 0.5 seconds.
"You can break that, right?" she asked, optimistic.
He didn't respond immediately.
"I can try."
He drew a folding spike of data from his belt, then plugged it into the port. Code flashed across his lens quicker than a human eye could read. He labored silently for almost four minutes—redirecting encryptions, catching every changing key, constructing a codeworm from scratch.
Then—
PING.
The door emitted a soft chime, then creaked open by itself.
What existed beyond was not what they had anticipated.
A soft-glowing circular room lined with crystalline walls. In the center of the room, one pedestal, and on it floated a small metallic cube. No alarms. No guards. Only. quiet.
Elira moved closer. "What is that?"
Darian stood there, amazed.
"That's not a drive. That's a. quantum lockbox. It contains encrypted memory—memories, actually. From someone."
Elira creased her brow. "Memories? Like a digital brain?"
"Yes. And not any. You don't keep a box like this in Ministry lockdown unless the contents are hazardous. Or priceless."
He moved slowly. "This is what The Hollow desires."
"Then we burn it," Elira said.
"No." His tone was controlled but cutting. "If we burn it, we lose our only bargaining tool. Whatever is inside—this—is what they're willing to die for. That means it's the only thing we can use to keep ourselves alive.
He stretched out with gloved hands and picked up the cube.
The lights burst red. Sirens shrieked. The vault door behind them slammed shut.
"Darian!" Elira screamed.
He turned, cube clutched in his hand. "The room's on a weight-activated security system. We overshot it."
Openings in the walls slid out—security turrets. Four of them, locking into position.
"No, no, no—" he grumbled. "I didn't make it this far to get zapped by—
The cube in his palm throbbed.
A burst of energy exploded from it, hitting the walls like a ripple in glass. The turrets fizzed. Their red lights went dark.
Then silence.
Darian gazed down at the cube.
"What the hell was that?" Elira breathed.
He eased it into his jacket pocket. "Whatever this is. it doesn't want to be caught."
Twenty minutes more, and they had emerged into the alleyway at the back of the Ministry, having climbed up through a maintenance chute. Darian's heart was still thudding. His mind reeled.
They had it.
The object The Hollow desired. The object already for which people had died.
And they had twenty hours remaining before the countdown expired.
They returned to the safehouse as the clock reached midnight. It was still raining, less insistent now, as if the city itself held its breath.
Darian placed the cube on the table.
Elira sat next to him, trembling—not with cold, but with the enormity of what they'd done.
"We need to go," she said. "Vanish. Now."
"We could," Darian said. "But they'd track us down."
He touched the cube again, thumb tracing the top.
It came to life immediately, humming.
A soft glow projected into the air above it—an image.
Of a man.
Darian's heart ceased to beat.
"Elira," he breathed. "That's my brother."
She spun hard. "Your what?"
"I thought he died. Ten years ago. That's. that's him. That's Casen."
The projection played back a recording. Casen's voice filled the room.
"If you're viewing this. they betrayed me. Not just The Hollow. The Ministry. Everyone. And I left the truth here, in this box. You want to know who the real villains are, Darian? You're about to find out. But you won't like the answer."
Darian's heartbeat pounded in his ears.
He gazed at Elira.
And for the first time ever since this all started, he understood—
This was no longer about surviving.
It was personal.